The estate is one of the six Douro properties of the Alves de Sousa family, who bought it in the late 1980s. Along with their other estates further along the valley, the family is one of the larger independent producers in the Douro.

The fourth generation of this family to be farming is Tiago Alves de Sousa, who explained they used to supply bulk wine to the famous Port shippers. But, he said “in the early 1990s, Port was struggling with the prices of bulk wine, so my father decided to explore still wines.”  He added “Port represented half the production of our vineyard, and we had the other half of ‘leftovers’ which wasn’t really the ‘leftovers’.  Because Port production is controlled, we couldn’t make Port from those grapes – from the same vineyard, from the same grape varieties.”

Alves de Sousa explained what a challenge it had been to make still wines.  All their expertise was in the making of Port wine, which requires a different use of winemaking skills from making still wine. Port wine needs super-ripe, sugar-rich fruit which undergoes an massive maceration. Still wines needs fresher fruit, and gentler, longer maceration.  Even now, more than 20 years later he said “it’s still something exciting and evolving.”

The vineyards at Gaivosa are at 350m to 500m above sea level, with the best of them facing west to maximise the sunlight hours at the cooler western end of the Douro, and because the altitude already adds a cooling influence. And, said Alves de Sousa “the vineyards have a bigger temperature amplitude between day and night, so grapes hold their acidity”, which is crucial for still wine.  He added “Baixas Corgo is very good for still wines because it’s cooler with more rainfall, so the wines have a better balance.”  But even in this region, those vineyards close the river surface, around 80-100m above sea level, can be too hot for still wines, but make good fruit for Port wine.

One of the property’s top wines comes from a two-hectare ‘abandoned vineyard’ which has half its vines missing. It sits at the top of a slope at 470 metres, with rock very close to the surface.  The family tried to replant the gaps but said Alves de Sousa “the new plants kept dying”.  The vineyard is a field blend of around 30 different grape varieties.

Quinta da Gaivosa

In another of the estate’s vineyards, Lordelo, the vines are 100 years old.

Come the winery, Alves de Sousa is making some single varietal wines, though “more to study the varieties than to think about the wine on its own.  We do a 100% touriga nacional, and our first vintage of sousão [2009] is still in the barrel.”

The family is also experimenting with white wines. Alves de Sousa said “higher altitude with north facing slopes provide great conditions for making modern white wines.” And he said “the best is yet to come with whites. We had to plant everything from scratch.  As the vineyards mature and as we get to know them better, whites in the Douro can get to the same level as reds.”

Tasting notes, in situ, March 2011

Quinta da Gaivosa, Branco da Gaivosa, Reserva 2009.
12.5%.  Blend of malvasia fina, which “behaves a bit like chardonnay; it gives body and shares the same family of floral flavours; gouveio, arinto and avesso, “which plays on mineral, acidity, freshness.” Fermentation in new French barrels because “we wanted to have a long ageing to work on the structure and complexity.”
Golden colour. Rich, toast and tropical notes, supple and soft fruits with fine texture on palate; oak is overt and seamlessly done. Savoury, full and fresh, with aromatic spiciness, great depth and length. Vg.

Quinta da Gaivosa, Quinta da Gaivosa 2005
14%. Blend of around 20 grape varieties. 15 months in 2^nd year French barrels.
Fragrant, strawberries and raspberries. Gently balanced with wweet and textured fruit, medium weight, with warmth of alcohol at end amid lovely aromatics.

Quinta da Gaivosa, Reserva Persoal 2005
14.5%; 80 year old field blend.
Dark, muscley fruit, yet with supple and rounded texture. Fresh with attentive grip, but not grippy. Lovely.

Quinta da Gaivosa, Vinha de Lordelo 2007
15.5%. Baked fruits and fresh redcurrant preserve. Sweet and fragrant, with mulberry jamminess alongside freshness, lift, an aromatic core and density of flavour. Long and refined. Vg.

Quinta da Gaivosa, Abandonado 2007
14.5% Complex, multi-layered nose, big, toasty, mint and tar notes, rich in savouriness. Dark berry fruits, fresh and aromatic in brooding, chocolate-y style, and with great length. A ‘meditation wine’. Vg.

My research visit to the Douro was sponsored by the ‘Discover the Origin’ campaign.

Michel Chapoutier

A five-hectare vineyard plot in Bernardvillé forms the core of a Michel Chapoutier Alsatian joint venture for a series of wines sold under the Shieferkopf label.

The name, meaning hill of schist, is one of the highest vineyards in Alsace at 380m above sea level. Total production amounts to 2,500 cases.

Chapoutier’s joint venture is with an eclectic group of friends who call themselves the club des cinq, after a children’s book: the lawyer, the retailer, the transporter and the brewer joined forces with the winemaker to work the patchwork of schist soils in Alsace, which Chapoutier said give ‘poise and austerity to the wines, with high minerality.’  

Even the type of schist becomes important. Chapoutier said “Kastelberg is on black schist, which has less clay which gives a harder, more mineral, austere wine” compared to the blue schist of the property, adding “where there is more clay, there is more power and roundness.” 

As well as five rieslings, sylvaner and pinot gris are made. Chapoutier was “impressed by some Franken wines, and sylvaner is a good introduction for Alsace.” The fruit for the sylvaner is bought in from outside the domaine, as it is for the two grand cru rieslings.

Whilst the wines follow traditional fermentation in big Alsatian casks, Chapoutier has marked a line in the sand with these wines:  all are dry and all have undergone malolactic fermentation.  Neither of these practices is widely common in Alsace. He added “the idea for all our Alsace wines is simple: we wanted wines with no residual sugar.” Additionally, “we add very late sulphites, and have no hyper-protection against oxidation.”

He also said he doesn’t want to make a “Chapoutier wine.  We won’t try to extract power. We want the soil to speak for itself, we want minerality,” adding he wants to make a style between the German and the Alsatian.

Tasting notes, London, April 2011

Sylvaner 2009, Alsace, ~£11
White nuts and almond skins. Elusive aromas, with smooth and silky texture and a hint of pink pepper spice.  Quite full and round-bodied, with lush fruits and white pepper hints.

Pinot Gris 2009, ~£14
White pepper, then orange peel and marshmallow. Lush and fat, yet fresh. Creamy texture, which more than makes up for subdued aromas.  Rich almond cream and white floral flavours.
Chapoutier: “we want an elegant bitterness in this wine”

Riesling 2009, ~£14
Peachy and citrus. Lime flowers with some pithy citrus notes. Aromatic core with smooth, rounded texture, and sweet fruit, and attractive freshness at the back of the palate.

Riesling Kastelberg 2009, Alsace Grand Cru, ~£18
Fat, peachy and tropical notes on the nose, Creamy, texture with peach and apricot fruits, but all a bit reticent to come forward on this tasting.

Riesling Wiebelsberg 2009, Alsace Grand Cru, ~£18
This is on pink sandstone. Chapoutier: “it is naturally a wine with a lower level of fatness. It’s impossible to have power on a sandstone soil.”
Floral nose, with sweet fruit of peach and pear.  Linear , lifted and refined creamily textured wine, with expressive elegance and aroma.  Long finish.

Riesling Buehl 2009, Lieu-Dit, ~£25  
From a 1.2ha plot. South facing slopes on blue schist at 330m.
Stony, peachy nose; elusive aroma. Silky palate, textured and soft. Full, creamy, spicy and stony with long finish.
Chapoutier: “a litte touch of bitterness and saltiness here is typical with apricots and apricot flower.”

Riesling Fels 2009, Lieu-Dit, ~£28
From a 0.8ha plot, higher altitude than Buehl, at 350m, and facing south-east
Peachy with hints of firestone and tropical fruits. Rich, quite full bodied, with sweetly-ripe fruits, peaches and crème fraiche, all with a softness of texture. Good. 
Chapoutier: “tobacco leaf and apricots.”

Rainbow on Montsant

The microscopically concertina-ed hilly landscape of remote, picturesque Priorat (Catalan)/ Priorato (Castilian) is not for the faint-hearted or travel-sickly, but it is well worth the pain and consequences of both to appreciate the scenery and the wines.

The small region is located in the province of Tarragona. It’s about 90 miles and a couple of hours’ drive south west of Barcelona, tracking the coastline before finally heading inland.

It’s roughly 10 kilometres across at its widest point, by about 12 km north to south, and is protected by the Sierra de Montsant in the northwest. The mountain gives its name to another DO, Montsant, which almost completely encircles Priorat (separate article will follow shortly). The vineyards range from 100m to 700m above sea level, necessarily on terraces due to the tightly-folded mountainous terrain. The river Siurana runs through Priorat into the river Ebro on its way from the Rioja region to the Mediterranean sea.

Scala Dei

Priorat takes is name from a priory – the Priorato de Scala Dei (Priory of the Stairway of God) – after an Order of Carthusian monks arrived in 12th century.  The winery in this tiny settlement, Scala Dei, is now owned by Cava house Codorníu).

So vines have been grown in Priorat for centuries, but the wines achieved acclaim as recently as the 1990s, after a ground-breaking group of growers moved in to the tiny hilltop village of Gratallops to make wine. In 1979, it was René Barbier of Clos Mogador, whose family business was relatively nearby in Penedès, who first recognised the region’s potential to produce top quality wine. The friends started by producing a wine each labelled ‘Clos’ to distinguish themselves from the traditional rustic, baked fruit style of wine from the region.

They were, with the current names of their properties:

1989 was their first vintage, at which time the vineyard area had dropped to a low point of about 600 ha. After phylloxera, and after the Civil War, the region was quite isolated, and during the 1940s and ’50s people were migrating to the industrialising cities of Tarragona and Barcelona.

Howling of the wolves

It was at the hilltop village, and heartbeat of ‘new’ Priorat, Gratallops, that these late 20^th century pioneers congretated. This is a village that has barely changed for years, but has seen a regrowth in population to 300 thanks to Priorat’s revival. Gratallops translates as ‘howling of the wolves’, reflecting the fauna of its original remote location; local art installations pay homage to this heritage.

Their early success in crafting top quality wines, often from very old vines and small yields, has drawn in numerous other people to the region, both Spanish and foreign investors. Further acknowledgement was achieved when the DOQ (Catalan)/ DOCa (Spanish) was awarded in 2000, effective from the 2000 vintage. Up till then only Rioja DOCa had the highest quality level of the Spanish wine system.

Mechanisation is virtually impossible in this terrain, and it is the combination of soils and grape varieties that create the serendipitous conditions for strong, muscular red wines that yet retain a certain amount of attractive freshness that is not often found in the warm, sometimes hot, Mediterranean climate of much of Spain.

There are 1,600 hectares (ha) of vines, 40% planted to garnacha (grenache in French), another 30% planted to cariñena (carignan in France), plus 20% to international interlopers cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah, thought to ’soften’ the dense, dark, spiciness of the other two. There’s also 100ha of garnacha blanca and macabeo (a.k.a. viura, as in Rioja). Alvaro Palacios, of the eponymous winery, may be drawing away from the international varieties, but Carles Pastrana with his Clos de l’Obac is happy that the three comprise more than 50% of the blend.

Llicorella with root network

The llicorella soil, a local name for the rocky slate and schist which is rich in sparkly quartzite, provides one of the defining characters for Priorat wines. Palacios, who is now more famous for his top L’Ermita wine, said the llicorella is a “metamorphic rock, formed under the earth’s crust where two horizons of limestone had compacted a layer of clay. It has three times more metals and minerals than sedimentary rock [that has not undergone metamorphosis]. The slate is red brown at Finca Dofi, with lots of iron oxide, and very warm. At L’Ermita, there is cooler green slate, which has higher aluminium and zinc.” The exposition and altitude of these two vineyards is also different, but the llicorella is argued to have a primary role in each wine’s flavour profile.

Thin clay layers are important. The region has less than 400mm annual rainfall, which would usually demand irrigation for vineyards, and some irrigation does exist here. But not everywhere. Palacios added: “we have 35% clay in the licorella. The layers of slate have clay powder in between which retain moisture.” Barbier added that vine roots penetrate the llicorella, and a fine mat of roots develops in the layers where the moist clay powder resides, able to draw on the moisture. With the tiny yields garnered by top producers, it would seem that this is sufficient to keep the vine watered through the dry Mediterranean summer.

Clos Mogador

For producers such as Barbier and Palacios, working the land as naturally as possible is important. The amphitheatre of the narrowly-terraced Clos Mogador vineyard is covered with grasses and flowers in Spring, which are mown by hand-held strimmer after they’ve flowered, to give the vine more air. The foliage is then ploughed into the soil over the summer. Barbier is a man convinced by the benefits of biodiversity, and retains the traditional cherries, almonds, peaches, and olives interspersed with his vineyards.

Over the past three or four years Priorat producers have been developing a ‘village’ concept for some of their wines. Called ‘Vi de Vila’ (wine of the village), all the fruit used must come from the property of the producer and be within the newly-defined viticultural boundaries of the village (which differ from the administrative boundaries). The idea is that each village may have (or become to have) its own identity. Thus Palacios’ new Vi de Vila is called Gratallops, as the vines are within the Gratallops borders. The first vintage, 2007, will be released during 2009. Other villages include Porrera, Poboleda and Bellmunt.

Vintage conditions are also important in this warm area. 2003, 2004 and 2005 were very hot. 2006, 2007 and 2008 were a little cooler. This shows in the wines, with greater elegance and freshness (acidity) in the more recent vintages. The wines retain their famed muscularity and broad shoulders, but a little coolness seems to tone their brute strength and slim the waist to more attractive proportions.

Such is the region’s stellar reputation that producers are still coming to Priorat, with the number reaching nearly 100, from about 70 in the last quarter of 2008. But they pay the price for land. What cost less than €1,000/ha 30 years ago, was costing something like €60 to €80,000 /ha a couple of years ago.

This article was inspired by a visit to the region sponsored by Wines from Spain.

Palacios was one of René Barbier’s group of friends who resurrected the wines of Priorat in the late 1980s and 1990s with his Clos Dofi (later renamed to Finca Dofi). His Priorat property was founded in 1989, when there were only 600 hectares (ha) of vineyard left in the largely abandoned wine region.

His Priorat property is 30 ha. He also works with 110 producers and 150 parcels.  The densely-folded mountain terrain necessitates terraces and vineyard parcels can be quite tiny.

L’Ermita is his most famous vineyard. It’s a north-facing, so away from the sun in the northern hemisphere, single vineyard slope at 400 to 520m above sea level, planted only to garnacha.

With more than 20 years experience in Priorat, Palacios has begun to move away from using international grapes such as cabernet sauvignon in his wines.  He says he’s favouring more of the traditional garnacha. His wines still contain the international varieties, but, he said: “all the wines will be more and more garnacha.”

Alvaro Palacios

He is also reverting from trellised vines to the bush training of the original vineyards. He said: “I’ve realised in the last years of heat and drought the bush vineyards are better.  The ‘bush’ is close to ground, so the sap does not have far to travel. And there is no humidity to avoid.” Trellis training is usually higher, as it is traditionally found in areas where humidity needs to be avoided.  Also, he added: “On trellises, grapes are exposed to the sun. On bush vines, the fruit is in the shade,” so in a warm to hot Mediterranean climate, the fruit does not burn and become raisined on the vine.

Priorat wines:

• L’Ermita. 100% garnacha on a north facing granite slope of 1.75ha.
• Finca Dofi: a ‘modern’ style, according to Palacios, coming from young vines and fruit he doesn’t use for L’Ermita. North and east facing slopes on limestone.
• Gratallops. A new wine in 2009, from the 2007 vintage. A wine from the village.
• Les Terrasses: 9ha estate in Gratallops. North-east/south-west and east aspect. 250 to 350m asl.
• Camins del Priorat: a new wine in 2009, from the 2007 vintage.

Tasting notes (tasted March 2009, at the property)

Camins del Priorat 2007: 55% carinena, 35% garnacha, rest cabernet sauvignon and syrah.  Fresh, supple, red fruits, silky texture, really approachable. Sweet fruit.

Les Terrasses 2007: For the first time in 2007, the wine is made from old vines, 60 years plus. 60% carinena, 30% garnacha, some cabernet sauvignon and syrah. 12 months in barrique, 25% new.  Spicy, red berried fruit, with attractive fragrance.  Elegant, defined. Rich fruit.

Gratallops, Vi de Vila, 2007: 35% garnacha, 40% carinena, cabernet sauvignon. Chewy, bright, fresh, linearity and poise, good concentration, and depth of fresh fruit. Balance and deportment. Long finish, vg

Finca Dofi 2007: 55% garnacha, rest cabernet sauvignon, syrah. Bit of merlot in cooler vintages such as 2007.  Deep colour, fresh, bright, crunchy berry and cherry, finely grained youthful tannins. Long palate length. Sensual texture. Medium full body, smoothening mid-palate.

L’Ermita 2007: medium deep colour; cherry, bitter chocolate, liquorice. Sweet spice to the red berry fruit. Succulence of fruit, no massive bulk/hulk; elegance and finesse. Fine textured sweet tannins.

L’Ermita 2008: bright medium cherry colour. Pure cherry and strawberry, light yet with concentration, finely grained tannins, very serious wine with intellect.

This article was inspired by a visit to the region sponsored by Wines from Spain.